Women Hold Up Half The Sky?

This paper focuses on the experiences of rural women participating in agricultural production in Wenzhou between 1950 and 1960,and illustrates the changes in the division of labor and income.The national policy,regional practice and women's reaction are the three basic footholds of the article.Wenzhou was not a region with obvious advantages of natural resources.Due to the serious contradiction of population and land resource in modern times,local residents had to seek a diversified economic way out.With regard to the gender division of labor,before 1949 there remains a traditional model that "men work outside and women inside".Local women are mostly engaged in textile,family handicrafts and sideline,and were only occasionally involved in agriculture.This model was changed after the Chinese Communist Party gained power in 1949.The "women's work" pursued by the new regime,on the one hand,advocated women's participation in agricultural production and took "equal workload" as the main symbol of gender equality;on the other hand,it emphasized the protection of women's special rights.But in the implementation of the policy,it was difficult to strike a balance.In general,the women's federation in Wenzhou was still focusing on mobilizing women to join agricultural production.This approach was implemented since the start of the agricultural cooperation movement and had been strengthened after the formation of the planned economic system.Meanwhile,the trend towards the transformation of women into the agricultural labor force became clearer.However,this process was not without hindrance.In the early stage(1950-1952)of mobilization work in Wenzhou,rural women could not play an effect in agricultural production due to family issues and a lack of technology and incentives.It became urgent for the official to come up with appropriate solutions and make adjustments in the policy.In 1952,the land reform was completed in Wenzhou,and the agricultural cooperation movement was immediately put on the agenda.In the process of growing the scale of the agricultural cooperation organization and absorbing a large number of women,labor remuneration determined women's participation in agricultural production.Between 1952 and 1954,women were unable to obtain high work points in cooperatives,and cooperatives had been slow to pick up women's membership.By 1955 and 1956,this phenomenon had changed a little.In order to expand the cooperative organization rapidly,the official adjusted the work-point distribution system within the cooperative and offered remuneration that was far more than the previous level and market level to female members.The policy,to a certain extent,ensured the rapid completion of the cooperative movement.However,after a large number of women joined the community,the problem that they lacked agricultural technology problems was further highlighted.To this end,the official took cooperation organization as the unit to train women for basic agricultural production skills.Most of the women learned about cultivation techniques of rice and other major food crops,and a small part of the activists had the opportunity to accept training of new farm tools.However,such high work-point policy was not maintained for a long time.From the winter of 1956,rural women's agricultural work enthusiasm began to subside.Many people chose to return to family sideline.Until the kickoff of the Great Leap Forward movement in 1958,in order to re-mobilize more rural women into agricultural production,the official carried out a "welfare"mobilization policy that took the socialization of housework as a core.During the Great Leap Forward movement,for example in Pingyang County,although there were a large number of welfare organizations,such as public restaurants,child care groups,maternity homes and so on,and the attendance rate of women reached 100%in a short term,these organizations went bankrupt eventually due to inadequate investment and poor management.This paper believes that in the era of planned economy,although the official production policy in pursuit of agricultural production and labor-intensive investment broke the boundaries of the old division of labor,men and women had to compete in the same industry with the influx of female labor into agriculture,exacerbating the contradiction between the sexes.Meanwhile,in the labor force system with a standard of physical strength,the female labor force was confined at the edge of the system for various reasons,so the deterioration of women's situation exacerbated.After the Great Leap Forward movement,although the official reduced requirements of the female labor force,the work-point system that was gradually strengthened since the cooperative movement and the Great Leap Forward movement had been retained.And a new female labor evaluation system was set up.Until the 1980s after the rural economic system reform and even today,this evaluation system is still playing an invisible influence.